A Hopscotch Summer

by Annie Murray

‘I’ll stay here,’ Em said.

  ‘No, Em!’ Sid wailed. ‘You gotta come to the park. Joycie’s no good!’

  ‘I am good!’ Outraged, Joyce went to hit him but he dodged and she knocked her hand on the arm of the chair instead and started wailing all over again.

  Em stuck her tongue out at him. ‘Now look what you’ve done, stupid! And I’m staying to help our mom and that’s that!’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ Bob shouted, already on his nerves. ‘Shut it, Joycie, that’s enough. You can stay behind if yer want, Em. You can mind the babby and let your mother lie down. There’s a good wench. And I’ll bring you back a lollipop.’

  ‘I want a lollipop!’ Joyce grizzled.

  ‘Right, I’ve ’ad enough of the lot of yer!’ Bob reached the end of his patience. ‘Just clear out and play for a bit. I don’t care if it’s raining. You’ll just ’ave to make the best of it!’

  The children tumbled out to the wet pavement as ordered. A few minutes later Bob came out and walked through the drizzle to the corner shop for his Woodbines. Once home, he sank into his chair and lit up. He was tired out himself and his shoulders ached. He ought to get Cynthia a bite of breakfast, keep her strength up, but he’d got time for a fag, hadn’t he?

  Resting his feet on the fender he sucked in the smoke like a soothing balm. Cynthia being upstairs all morning felt as wrong to him as it did to the kids. The mother was the heart of the house, no doubt about it. But in another way he was relieved. What was he supposed to do or say to the woman when she was in that state? He had no idea. If he just did his best and looked after the kiddies for a bit, she’d come round, he told himself. Things’d get back to normal, and the sooner the better so far as he was concerned.

  Em sat on her dad’s chair by the range, feeling very grown up. They’d had a bite of dinner and the others had gone out to the park with the tall slippery slide that Sid loved to go whizzing down.

  ‘You’re going to get a wet arse,’ Bob told him. ‘But never mind. Come on, get moving!’

  Violet had had a feed and was asleep in Em’s arms. Mom had said to put her on the floor on a blanket but Em couldn’t resist holding her, looking down at her face, twitching in sleep, at the tiny pink marks on her eyelids and her astonishing little ears and nostrils. Em had adored Joyce from the moment she arrived. She’d been her baby, her playmate ever since. And she felt very loving to Violet too, but she wished her new sister hadn’t made Mom so poorly.

  ‘Never mind, Violet. T’ain’t your fault. I s’pect our mom’ll get better soon,’ she said, enjoying the milky baby smell, warm in her nostrils.

  After a while her arms grew tired and she laid Violet carefully on the soft bed she had made on the floor. Now what should she do? She had her drawing, and she thought about cleaning up, the way Mom did, as she was the one grown-up and in charge today. But she couldn’t seem to think how to get going on that.

  Quite soon she felt lonely, and decided to go and check if her mother was asleep. If she wasn’t, maybe she’d let Em cuddle up beside her on the bed, the blissful way she used to when Em was little, before the time came when there was always another babby in the way and no room for her. If Violet stayed asleep, Em thought, she could just curl up with mom until the others got back.

  She tiptoed upstairs, her bare feet silent on the threadbare runner of carpet, once dark green, now an indeterminate sludge colour. Halfway up she stopped, hearing the creak of bedsprings, and realized, excited, that Cynthia was not asleep. She could go to Mom, who would smile and open her arms and say, ‘Come on – you can get up here, young lady!’

  The shock hit her in the pit of her stomach. Peeping round the bedroom door, she saw Cynthia sitting up in bed, head in her hands, rocking back and forth. The saddest, most desolate mewling issued from her, like an injured cat Em once saw hit by a dray on the horse road. The noise went on and on, and its inhuman strangeness made her mother seem like someone else.

  Em’s legs turned weak and she crept back down the stairs, trying to block out of her mind what she had seen and heard. She prayed Violet wouldn’t wake up and as the baby had been on the go such a lot in the night she did settle in for a long nap. Em sat at the table with her pieces of paper, drawing all her favourite things, cats and puppies and the baby horse she once saw just after it was born in the stable over on the other side of the gas works. Horses were so hard to draw. She didn’t want to go upstairs again. She wanted Dad and the others to come back. It crossed her mind to run to Dot’s, or across to Mrs Button, but she didn’t want to leave Violet, or wake her by moving her.

  Eventually, when the others were still not back, Violet did wake. Full of dread, Em carried her upstairs, daring herself to look into the bedroom, but to her relief Cynthia was lying quietly now, though not asleep.

  ‘I think she wants her milk, Mom,’ Em suggested.

  Cynthia turned on her side as if her limbs were almost too heavy to move. Her face looked puffy and strange and her nightdress fell open at the front.

  ‘Give her here,’ she commanded, in a lifeless voice.

  Em perched timidly on the bed as her mother lay with the baby at her breast.

  ‘Good girl, Em,’ Cynthia said, but the words seemed to cost her a great effort.

  A few moments later they heard the door open downstairs and the others come in. Normally there would be squeaks of excitement, or quarrels, but it was strangely quiet as if they had been warned not to wake their mother. She heard Bob say something, then his feet on the stairs. Somewhere in her mind she already knew something was wrong by the quiet and the way he was walking: heavily, not calling out.

  And then he was standing in the doorway, pale and aghast, his features sucked in tight.

  ‘It’s . . .’ he began. For a second he seemed about to weep but caught himself. ‘It’s Joyce. We were down the park and I bought ’em an ice cream. They were playing and . . . I was only talking to John Fowler, he was passing, like, and I turned round and she weren’t there – weren’t nowhere. We searched high and low. We’ve been round and round everywhere, but . . . our Joycie’s disappeared.’

  Eight

  Within moments Cynthia was out of bed, her worry driving out all other considerations. She threw on her clothes and rushed round to Dot and the other houses nearby to ask everyone for help. She was liked in the neighbourhood and knew she could rely on them, and everyone was fond of Joyce. But at first no one else was worried. They tried to reassure her.

  ‘Don’t you go fretting, Cynth,’ Dot told her. ‘Young Joycie’ll’ve just wandered off somewhere. When she’s satisfied her curiosity she’ll be home.’

  ‘She’ll soon come running home when she’s ready for ’er tea!’ someone else said.

  They all wanted to believe that Joyce had just wandered off. But it wasn’t like her. Sociable Joyce was like Em’s shadow. She wasn’t one for going off on her own.

  ‘Was there anyone about, could’ve offered her sweets?’ Cynthia fired out frantic questions. ‘You must’ve seen summat!’

  ‘No, I never saw a thing,’ Bob told her desperately. ‘One minute she were there and when I turned round . . .’ He shrugged, his face haggard with anguish.

  They all rushed back to the recreation ground, Dot and some of the others as well. Cynthia, refusing to leave Violet with anyone, was pushing her in the pram, and Em and Sid had to trot to keep up. Em felt sick, sensing her mom and dad’s panic. Soon after they got there the neighbours spread out around the streets. Em and Sid were still with Bob, but Cynthia had rushed off somewhere else, moving faster than the rest of them as they trawled the neighbouring area. She was rushing along, frantic, with the pram. Em followed her father’s steady tread as they scanned the rec, then walked the streets, calling Joyce’s name, asking people if they’d seen her. She would have been hard to pick out among a gaggle of the neighbourhood children. Em kept looking to see a blue ribbon in a little girl’s hair.

  ‘I ain’t seen anything out the ordinary,’ one woman
said. ‘No kids that looked as if they was lost . . . There was a little girl I ain’t seen before – she had a dolly, beautiful it was – but she was with her mother, quite well-to-do looking.’

  No, not Joyce. They shook their heads sadly and moved on. Most people were kind and promised they’d keep an eye out, but there was nothing else they could say.

  Em held Sid’s hand. He was unusually quiet and just followed and she kept thinking: We’ll find her in a minute, just round the next corner. She expected to see Joycie running towards them, right as rain.

  But she didn’t come.

  They walked and walked in the damp, grey afternoon, covering the same ground over and over again, circling back to the recreation ground as if they just couldn’t believe she wasn’t there, that they hadn’t looked carefully enough. Now and then they met Cynthia hurtling along with the pram, her hair a wild frizz in the damp.

  ‘I’ll go this way,’ she’d say, rushing off again. ‘No good us all going together, is it?’

  The hours passed. The neighbours had all drifted home but the family could not be persuaded to tear themselves away. How could they go home without Joycie when it was getting dark? Once again they ended up in the recreation ground, staring across at the tall slippery slide, willing Joyce to be one of the dwindling number of children queuing to go down it. They all stood in tired, defeated silence.

  ‘Better go to the fuzz,’ Bob said at last. ‘If Joyce was going to turn up she’d’ve been here by now.’

  Some of the neighbours came out to greet them in the drizzly dusk when they got back to Kenilworth Street. Em saw Katie and Molly among them. She didn’t know what to say to them but was glad they were there. This was a crisis; it wasn’t just a question of a child wandering off for an hour or two. Em heard the murmurs of speculation.

  ‘D’yer think them Mormons’ve got her?’ somebody suggested.

  ‘What about the gyppos? They was only round with their pegs and lavender a day or two back. I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw ’em.’

  There were mutterings about sinister strangers who’d been seen in the area and about the white slave trade until Em could stand to hear no more and moved away. Sid stayed stuck to her side. He seemed younger suddenly, big-eyed and silent, clinging to her hand. Cynthia had not come back with them and Em didn’t know where she was, but soon Bob appeared again, hurrying back from the police station.

  ‘They said they’d keep an eye out,’ Bob told the neighbours, bitterly. ‘Fat bloody use! If you want anything done, you have to do it yer cowing self round ’ere.’

  ‘The Land Fit for Heroes,’ another old soldier, left with only one arm to fill his jacket sleeves, took up his usual complaint. ‘You can be a hero if you are fit. The rest can go hang so far as the powers that be are concerned. No one gives a sod about us.’

  ‘Where’s your mother?’ Bob asked Em.

  Em shrugged. She was cold and scared. Although it was comforting having all these people out there with them, she felt overwhelmed and just wanted to go inside in the warm. Sid kept tugging on her hand saying, ‘When’re they going to find Joycie?’

  ‘I dunno. Just shut yer cake’ole, will yer?’ she snapped, thinking even then what a telling-off she’d have from her mom if she’d heard her using that expression.

  Sid started to snivel. ‘I want Mom and our Joyce – and I want my tea!’

  ‘Oh, Sid.’ Em relented and put her arm round his shoulders, her own tears starting to well up. It was dark now, the neighbours moving like shadows between the dim street lights, talking and speculating. Everything felt serious and frightening now night had come and still there was no Joyce.

  ‘I wish our mom’d come back,’ she sobbed, as she and Sid clung together in the dark street.

  Cynthia stopped in a dimly lit side street and lifted Violet out of the pram. The child had been crying for some minutes, needing a feed after the long afternoon being propelled along the streets by a mother half out of her mind with worry.

  ‘No one’ll see me here,’ Cynthia panted, unfastening the front of her dress. She crouched down on a step deep in the shadows and let the hungry infant suckle from her leaking breasts. There were patches of wet down her front that until now she had not been aware of.

  It was the first time she had been still for hours. Looking round she saw that she was by the wall of the old cavalry barracks where they were planning to build the flats. Now she was still, the worry of the situation hit her even harder.

  ‘Where are you, Joycie? For God’s sake, where’ve you gone?’ she said desperately. ‘Come home, wherever you are! We just need you home.’

  The tears came then, all the pent-up feelings of the afternoon tearing out of her in sobs. She wept for a time, then dashed her tears angrily away. There wasn’t time for all that: she had to keep searching, to find her little girl!

  All afternoon she had circled the area round the recreation ground where Bob had taken the children, entreating the heavens that in one of the streets, round one of the corners or alleys, she would spy Joyce wandering lost.

  ‘Joycie, Joycie, where are you?’ she’d muttered to herself. ‘Your mom’s here – come on, Joycie, come to me . . .’

  Though she had barely eaten for days, she had been ablaze with energy, as if she could rush onwards, searching and asking everyone forever, and her strength would never run out.

  She’d hurried north as far as Ashted Row, across towards the canal, winding back and forth through the narrow little streets, her whole being shrieking with need for the sight of her daughter. Once or twice she thought she saw her and tore along towards a small girl, hope pulsing in her, only to be bitterly disappointed. People looked at her strangely, a dark-eyed woman, hair scattered wildly over her shoulders, dressed only in a thin frock, tearing along with a pram as if Old Nick was after her. She stopped and asked them, over and over, and seeing their shaking heads, moved on. Hours had passed, but she scarcely noticed.

  Now she had stopped, though, it was as if she had collided with a wall of weariness and despair. Sitting on the step, the child’s urgent mouth on her nipple, she rubbed a hand over her wet cheeks, aching with need and worry. For a moment she closed her eyes and let out a shuddering sigh. A train was shunting in the goods yard nearby and its rhythmic chuffing seemed to echo the leaden thud of her heart.

  She was startled by a low, cracked voice. ‘Can you spare us a penny, lady?’

  Opening her eyes, she saw a small, huddled figure in the shadows, a stooped woman shrouded in rags.

  ‘I’ve had not a bite since yesterday.’

  ‘I, I’ve no money,’ Cynthia said to the poor old dear. Normally she would have given, of course she would. The old and sick were the ones suffering the most in these hard times.

  ‘God bless you, lovey.’ The little figure shuffled away, melting into the darkness.

  This brief encounter brought Cynthia back to herself. When she had given Violet a drink from each breast she snatched her nipple away and dragged herself to her feet to settle her in the pram, swaying from hunger and exhaustion. She wondered what the time was. The streets were quiet now, though the pubs were open, full of light and chatter.

  Trying to summon the burning energy she had had earlier, she pushed the pram on down the street, but now she was full of chill hopelessness. How was she ever going to find Joycie? Then a new hope lit in her. Her head seemed to clear. She had no idea whether they had found Joyce already and she was at home. Perhaps it was all right after all and Joyce was already tucked up in her bed with Em while she was out here circling the streets!

  Moving even faster, she propelled the pram towards home. Turning into Great Lister Street, almost running, she caught sight of a blessedly familiar figure coming her way.

  ‘Cynth?’ Her husband’s voice rang along the street, sounding shrill with tension. She dashed to meet him.

  ‘Bob! Oh what’s happened? You’ve found her, haven’t you? Tell me you’ve found her!’ She clung to
him, finding none of the reassurance she craved in the distraught lines of his face.

  ‘No . . .’ He shook his head brokenly. ‘No, love, we ain’t. I come to find you this time. Come home, Cynth – we’ll have to carry on in the morning. It’s no good now. We’ve looked everywhere there is to look – it’s like a needle in a haystack.’

  ‘You can’t just give up and go home!’ she shrieked, working herself back up into hysterics, pulling on his arm. ‘We can’t just leave her – she’s only a babby, out in the streets without us! We’ve got to carry on!’

  ‘It’s no good!’ Hating himself for it, he delivered a slap across her cheek and she reeled away, stunned for a moment. ‘We can’t just go on wandering about, wearing ourselves out! There’s the others – and you’ll make yerself ill. Come home with me and in the morning we’ll start again.’

  Commandingly, he took Cynthia’s arm and all the fight suddenly went out of her. She went limp. He led her to the pram which he pushed with his other hand. ‘Come on, love, let’s go home.’

  Em reached out her hand, but all she felt was the cold place in the bed where Joyce should be beside her. She couldn’t sleep without Joyce. Princess Lucy was a tiny comfort and she cuddled her tightly, but she couldn’t make up for her sister’s warm, comforting little body.

  She lay looking up into the dark, frightened and bewildered. Everything about the day had been wrong: Mom crying in bed, and then everything that came afterwards even worse – Joyce disappearing, the terrible worry on their faces, searching, never finding her. She didn’t feel like crying now. Instead a sick feeling sat like a stone in her belly.

  I should’ve gone with them, not stayed in with our mom!

  What was Mom always saying: ‘Look after our Joycie – you’re the big sister.’ And she always had looked after Joycie and it had been a happy, joyful part of her life. And now she’d gone and let everyone down – it was all her fault!

  Unable to stand the cold, lonely bed any more she got up, taking Princess Lucy with her.